Busy lifestyles and the high-tech age have seen the emergence of a simpler and more modern approach to how we live our lives. This applies to both urban and suburban lifestyles. For many, urban living has become an increasingly popular lifestyle choice to simplify busy lives. Urban living environments are often less spacious than their suburban alternatives. As such, convertible furniture, such as a wall bed, is desirable in limited space environments. Such furniture permits a room to serve multiple functions by allowing a bed to be stored in a wall unit or a wall when not in use. This feature is also advantageous in more spacious environments rendering a room more versatile and multi-functional, such as for an occasional need for a bed. In commercial environments, such as hotels, multi-functioning rooms and/or rooms requiring selective extra sleeping accommodations are desirable. These requirements are achieved with the addition of a wall bed.
Typically, wall beds include a bed frame and a wall cabinet for housing the bed frame. The bed frame is moveable from a generally vertical or stored position within the cabinet, to a horizontal position for use as a bed. Common features among prior art wall beds include counter-balancing springs or pistons for counter balancing the weight of the bed frame and bed so that the bed frame may be easily raised into a stored position. Counter balancing springs or pistons also assist in positioning the bed for use so as to counteract the gravitational forces of the bed as it is being drawn downward. Prior art wall beds include legs to support the bed in use but which often are fixedly mounted to the bed frame such that they protrude outward when the bed is in the stored position, thereby adversely effecting the profile of the stored bed. Also common to prior art wall beds are beds having excessive weight resulting from complicated mattress support spring systems and complicated structures which adversely impacts the ease at which the bed may be moved from a stored to a useable position and vice versa The excessive weight of prior art wall beds renders them cumbersome to manipulate and, in some instances, renders them unsafe such as when the bed is released from a vertical position to a horizontal position. Without precautionary measures, the weight of the bed frame and mattress can pivot downward with great force, even with counterbalancing pistons, which can be especially problematic if the bed is unintentionally released. Prior art wall beds include bed frames permanently mounted to the wall cabinets. Accordingly, the bed frame is only provided with a certain cabinet preventing use of the bed frame within a customized cabinet or other housing structure.
For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,033,134 to Burchett (hereinafter “the '134 Patent”) is directed to a cabinet wall bed including a cabinet, a bed frame, a counterbalancing system and a leg-locking and supporting system. The leg-locking and supporting system is an intricate system including numerous components and extends from the underside of the bottom bed frame support. The leg-locking system according to the '134 Patent includes, in addition to numerous other components, a spring loaded leg support which is also the handle for moving the bed to and from the stored position, and which cooperates with a locking bar to secure the bed frame in a stored position. To pivot the bed frame to a vertical position, the complicated handle and leg is manually forced shut against compressive forces of the spring, and the bed is lifted. Assumedly this would require the user to reach beneath the bed frame to apply sufficient force to overcome the compression springs of the intricate leg-locking system to disengage the legs and use the legs as a handle to pivot the bed frame. Moreover, should the leg-locking system be unintentionally dislodged from the locking bar, the bed rotates to the horizontal position with no interim safety position.
Additionally, U.S. Pat. No. 5,353,452 to Rulis (hereinafter “the '452 Patent”) is directed to a folding bed assembly including a shell (or cabinet) and a bed pad for supporting a mattress. The shell includes a two piece outer, front surface including the underside of the bed pad and a separate foot which extends across the width of the bed pad and which serves as the uppermost portion of the outer, front surface. The relatively large “foot” according to the '452 Patent is pivotally connected to the outer surface of bed pad by a hinge such that when the handle of the “foot” is pulled downward, the bed pad pivots toward the horizontal position and the “foot” swings under forces of gravity to extend perpendicularly from the bottom and across the full width of the bed pad.